Chapter 61 Pitfall

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s over there, right on the edge.” Fatty looked at me and suddenly said, “A robber never leaves empty-handed. There may be something good down there, so I’ll go down and take a quick look. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I was furious, but there was no way for me to stop him—I had no one to back me up and he refused to listen to me. As he shifted the rest of Poker-Face’s weight onto me and dove into the water, I had no other choice but to tell him to hurry up.

But this endeavor didn’t turn out to be easy. The object was buried under a pile of pottery fragments, but digging through them was completely different from digging through soft sea sand. On the one hand, the pottery fragments were very sharp, and on the other hand, the edge of the pit was right there—as soon as the pottery fragments were moved, they slid down into the pit, making it difficult for Fatty to maintain his balance. Rummaging through the top layer was fine, but once Fatty tried to go deeper, it became very difficult. I saw him grab a pottery fragment from time to time and try to move it, but it wouldn’t budge, as if it was growing from inside the debris.

After digging for a while, Fatty seemed to have found his target. He resurfaced for air, dove back down, forcibly stuck his hand into the small hole he’d dug, and then yanked on the object. But after a couple of pulls, Fatty suddenly shuddered and then swiftly pulled his hand back. As the water around his hand started to turn red, I realized that he must be bleeding.

“Shit!” I cursed to myself, thinking that he must have been bitten by a corpse-eater king. But Fatty showed no signs of poisoning, just a wound that looked very deep. I anxiously watched as he exhaled, switched hands, pulled the object out, and then floated back up to the surface.

“What happened?” I immediately asked him.

“Shit, there seems to be a thorn or something sticking out of this bone. It hurts like hell.” Fatty sucked on his wounded finger, shook the water off of the skull he’d fished up, and asked me to shine my miner’s lamp on it.

“You brought this on yourself,” I muttered as I walked over to give him some light. But just as I reached him, I suddenly heard a series of muffled rumbling sounds coming from beneath my feet, followed by a bunch of bubbles rushing to the water’s surface.

Fatty and I both froze in shock. The bubbles soon disappeared, and then the series of rumbling sounds started up once more.

“Damn, no one will believe this. Your farts are on par with a rocket launcher, and rapid fire too. They’re so powerful…” Fatty said while covering his nose.

I looked around in confusion, “Fuck you, I didn’t fart.”

“If you didn’t fart, then why does it smell? If it stinks this bad, your poop must be lethal,” Fatty said with a frown.

There was indeed a stench in the air, but when I smelled it, I found that it wasn’t from a fart. I couldn’t remember what this smell was, but I instinctively felt uneasy, as if something was about to happen. Just as I was about to say that we should leave quickly, I suddenly lost my balance, the water exploded, and I sank deep below the surface, as if the ground below me had disappeared.

It all happened so fast. In that brief moment when my feet left the ground, my first thought was that I had slipped, so I immediately kicked my legs to try and regain my footing. But then countless bubbles started appearing all around me, and the pottery fragments beneath my feet started to move and slide in a certain direction, making it impossible to stand.

I panicked, but then immediately realized what was going on. Quickly pulling my legs up, I turned over and dove underwater, Fatty following close behind.

When I swept the miner’s lamp around, I saw that the bottom of the lake where we’d just been standing had collapsed, creating a large pit. It connected with the pit nearby, forming an even larger and deeper pit that all of the surrounding skulls and pottery shards were slipping into. I glanced back and saw that Poker-Face was being dragged towards the bottom of the pit as well, his feet buried so tightly in the pottery shards that he couldn’t pull them out. It almost seemed as if something had grabbed his feet and was pulling him down, trying to drag him into the bottom of the pit.

I had honestly forgotten about Poker-Face just now. In fact, he was the one always taking care of us, so we weren’t used to taking care of him. Seeing that his legs were trapped in the debris up to his thighs, it was obvious that he had been caught in the sudden collapse just now. Rather than resisting, it looked like he was just letting himself sink along with the debris.

Seeing that he was about to be dragged into the pit, Fatty and I rushed over to help, each grabbing one of his hands to try and pull him out. But Fatty didn’t have enough strength with only one hand, so he put the handle of the miner’s lamp between his teeth and used both hands to grab onto Poker-Face. Together, we kicked as hard as we could until we finally managed to pull him free.

This kind of situation would have been fatal if he was alone, but it wasn’t such a big deal when there were two or three of us to help. As soon as we pulled Poker-Face to the surface, he began coughing.

“I told you your fart was powerful,” Fatty said. “You even broke through the bottom of the lake. Remember to give a warning before farting in the future. Otherwise, someone might accidentally get hurt.”

Gasping for breath, I cursed at him, “You’re still making jokes at a time like this? I’ll fight you later.”

“Look at you, not even willing to take some good advice!” Fatty shined the miner’s lamp towards the bottom of the lake, revealing that the collapse was slowly expanding, although some parts had stopped. Soon, a pit about half the size of a basketball court appeared in front of us, dark and gaping like a big mouth that was ready to swallow us up. From time to time, some bubbles would rise up from below, bringing a foul stench with them.

I suddenly remembered that this was the smell of marsh gas. This pit must have been here originally, but wooden beams might have been placed over top of it. Once these beams had rotted, they maintained their fragile hold. Without any external forces acting on them, they were able to last for thousands of years, but if there was any damage, the wooden beams would immediately collapse. I figured the initial collapse we saw was caused by a broken wooden beam, but then Fatty started digging through the pottery fragments by the edge, which set off a chain reaction.

“Holy shit,” Fatty said. “Is the ground beneath this lake actually hollow?”

The pit didn’t appear to be very deep, but I couldn’t see the bottom since the water had turned murky from all the movement just now. “This may be some kind of mezzanine built to prevent the jars from falling through,” I said, eyeing him as he walked to the edge of the pit again. “Be careful. It held firm when I stepped on it just now, but then it suddenly collapsed. The whole ground beneath this lake might not be solid. One section has already collapsed, so try not to set off a chain reaction. If a whirlpool forms, we’ll definitely be screwed.”

“As long as you don’t fart, we’ll be fine,” Fatty replied. “Hey, what’s this?”

I followed the direction his lamp was pointing and saw something floating up from the depths of the pit.

“Stay back,” Fatty warned me. I reflexively moved back, pulling Poker-Face with me, while Fatty focused the miner’s lamp on that thing.

It floated up quickly, and soon reached the surface. At this time, we could clearly see that it was a clump of rotten wood and tree branches, interspersed with a lot of cotton-like debris. They must have been buried in the sediment below, but were brought to the surface when the falling pottery shards stirred everything up. The water remained murky for a while, but visibility was much worse near the pit.

Fatty fished out a few of the entangled branches, but when he smelled the stinky mud on his hand, he immediately threw them away, “Shit, we must have dug up some ancient mud. It stinks to high heaven. Do you think it’s an old cesspit?”

“Only your house would have a cesspit this big,” I said. “If you tried to take a dump here and your foot slipped, you’d probably be dead. Would you be able to poop in such conditions?”

When it came to spouting bullshit, Fatty was a master. If this really was a cesspit, then shitting would be more stressful than bungee jumping. I didn’t think even elephants would dare to use it. Surely the Queen of the West’s people wouldn’t torture themselves like this?

“Maybe the queen wanted her people to always be prepared for danger in times of peace, so she made them stay very alert even when pooping,” Fatty said seriously.

Tired of messing around, I quickly urged him to get moving, “Come on, let’s go. It’s too dangerous here!” We covered our noses and were about to leave, when Fatty suddenly fished something else out of the water. This time, however, it wasn’t a branch. He lifted it up and said, “Hey, what do you think this is?”

<Chapter 60><Table of Contents><Chapter 62>

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Ha, joke’s on me. It wasn’t a snake making those holes. Could have definitely gone without the poop discussion, though. Why, NPSS? WHY?